Help. Epic hotel choice failure

[BoffinMum]

So here we are in a family hotel in Italy on holiday, near Lake Garda. We are supposed to be here for two weeks and it's costing 5800 euros full board for four of us including DS2 (16) and DS3 (8). We have had a terrible year and this was supposed to be a special holiday to recover.

We all hate it. I hate it so much I could cry.

The hotel itself is really small and the things we thought we would use - spa and so on - are only open 4-7.30 daily (it said nothing about this on the website). We've just had a meal and it's reminiscent of school dinners - I could have cooked it better myself. You can only have dinner from 7-8pm. Nothing like the lovingly garnished offerings on the website, basically stodge. Even the teenager gave up ploughing through it. Our wine eventually came after we had fiinished the meal. There are no soft drinks for kids apart from Fanta, Sprite or Coke. The kids bedroom smells of smoke (as does ours) and has restricted ceiling height so DS2 is going to be banging his head the whole time. The decor reminds me of my grandmother's house about 30 years ago. There is nowhere to get away from the din because it's so small and i currently have a kids' disco under my window (it's 930 pm here) and DS3 is tired from travelling all day but it's too noisy to go to sleep.

I have been down the the manager to explain the problems but he just shrugged and said 'other people like it'. He said we have to stay at least a week otherwise they will have an empty room.

So we are trapped in this glorified youth hostel listening to a kids disco booming away under the window eating stodge and will have to spend 2900 euros for the privilege. And there may be nowhere else to go,

Help, what do I do?

That menu reminds me of the food in a hotel in Lido de Jesolo in 1976. I was 18 and went with a friend. We had saved up for a year and neither had ever been abroad before.

Consommé with pasta stars sums it up. In those days we had never seen pasta that didn't come out of a tin .

Best update ever! Hope you get a game plan together .

DH has been asleep, he is fairly knackered. We didn't get a lot of sleep last night although we missed the mountain rescue with full emergency services in attendance on the mountain opposite that Patsy observed. Probably escapees.

What a fantastic update, hope it makes it all more bearable

:o this thread will end up in classics

This is hilarious! Now you have collaborators, you can start tunnelling in earnest.

Oh, this is so funny! Glad for both of you that you've found comrades though.

Loving this!

Am in Zante, in equally unhappy circumstances, should anyone else want to come to my rescue

Feeling your pain. Any luck on escape plan?

I love that you've renamed pasty 'Patsy'. You know that makes you Edina, Boffin?

I spent a glorious holiday in Salo once, in a little hotel called the Villa Arcadio. I was pregnant with DC1 so it was our last kid-free holiday. It's probably a) full and b) massively expensive, not to mention a long way up in the hills but the food is good and the service impeccable. Worth a look? There were families there.

you know how the guy at reception said "everyone else is happy"?

I bet they aren't.

If you get a group to complain then they might at least make more of an effort with food etc.

then again that could compromise his originally offer to let you off next week's cost.

Oh, I didn't notice the username of Boffins new friend. I thought Patsy was her real name .

Love this thread. Apologies OP on your shite hotel but it's looking up as you may now have a gin swigging friend

i'd love to be able to escape my summer shitstorm, too, where I am the food is all microwaved, no bathroom facilities, other guests are whingeing like mad and all you hear are noisy builders.

it's my house. rescue please. asap. bring hot tub and a drinks trolley.

So sorry you have an absolutely crap hotel girls! Disappointing is an understatement 😰.

Love the fact the two of you have met up formed the Edina and Patsy army via a Mnet thread. 😎😎😎

Feel for you. Have had equally dire holidays, usually due to rain or wind however. There has been more than one we have abandoned ship to come home early. The family having chicken pox was a not so fun one, as was the one where the wind blew the awning down. One memory was tainted with the noise in the caravan - the kids so the only way we could escape them was to walk outside in torrential rain.
We aren't going on holiday this year. It's surprisingly non stressful!

I wonder if this will happen to a lot of people this year because of the drop in the pound's value? People going on holiday paying the same and expecting the same but getting a drop in quality?

Ooh how exciting.

Invade the kitchen Mnetters and show them how it is done!!!

Oh crap holidays are the worst, probably why we rarely bother 😬😬

I wonder if a dual compliant would hold more weight?

Sorry, I haven't rtft
This happened to us some years ago in Austria. What you need is good recommendations for somewhere you can realistically move to. DH found somewhere for us after a lot of Googling (it was 10 years ago!) and told the Manageress we were leaving and why. She hit the roof and said we would have to pay for the full two weeks after only two days. In his calmest but firmest voice, DH told her we would pay but he would get on Trip Adviser asap and give her terrible reviews and make sure he spread the word far and wide. In those days TA was new and in a way more powerful. She ripped up the bill and told us to fuck of and never come back - our pleasure! We have been going to the second hotel every year since!! Unfortunately Italian hotels are often shite and a total rip off

Ooh, now you could club your families together and book a villa when you get out of Fawlty Towers

Brilliant update!
I think you need to threaten a review on trip advisor now. If you can get the half board supplement refunded that would be something.

Sympathies, I stayed in a ski resort hotel in Italy that sounds similar. It was shite but we put up and shut up because the skiing was ace.

Oh brilliant! How long are the other couple there?
If you can't move, make lemons as the saying goes, when the kids are in bed all get drunk together and laugh it off. It could turn out to be your best holiday and you may make lifelong friends!

Is there one of these handy, OP?

Excellent update!